The Mech Touch

Though the shooting had begun over an hour ago, the intensity of the battle was not too great.

Not a lot of mechs were capable of dealing effective damage at longer ranges, and it was not that difficult to manage the incoming damage.

Ranged expert mechs such as the Amaranto hadn't even been put into play as of yet. Their firepower needed to be reserved against the greater threats of the Friday Coalition.

For now, the fight was predominantly fought by the lesser units of the two sides. The individual losses did not even register to the officers anymore as all of them understood that it was a numbers game.

Whoever ran out of mechs and lost all combat effectiveness first would lose this crucial engagement!

It took a lot of time to get to that point. The Fridaymen and the Hexers were well-versed with long campaigns that stretched across weeks or months of constant fighting.

The exchange of fire slowly intensified as more and more weapons became effective at different ranges.

Mechs such as the Larkinson Clan's Transcendent Punisher Mark II and Eternal Redemption Mark II started to bring their formidable gauss cannons to bear.

Ves paid a lot of attention to the latest edition of the Transcendent Punisher. The Ylvainain mech pilots did not activate the signature ability of their iconic mech model. They did not need to do so when they were mostly aiming their firepower at the stationary defensive fortifications of the Kosic Ring.

At his side, Shannon Maris tried her best to prevent his kids from running around the bridge of the Spirit of Bentheim and distracting the crew from performing their vital duties.

"Pew pew pew!" Andraste excitedly lifted a mech figurine of the Transcendent Punisher Mark II and pretended that its heavy cannons were firing beams and projectiles at the Sundered Phalanx. "Boom! You're dead!"

It actually took quite a bit of strength for Andraste to lift her toy. Since it was based on a heavy mech, it was larger and heavier than the other mech figurines that Ves had made for his daughter!

The energetic girl continued to play with her mech figurine until a larger pair of hands plucked the toy from her grasp!

"Now now, what did we tell you about shouting and yelling in the workplace, young lady?"

The red-headed girl jumped and tried to take back her toy, but her nanny kept it well out of her reach!

"Give it back!"

"I won't give it back until you calm down and learn your lesson. You need a reminder on how to behave. This is a serious situation, young lady!"

Further back, the oldest of the three children had become a lot more somber about what was happening.

"Meow."

"Miaow."

Aurelia tried her best to look composed and in control while she remained seated on her child-sized chair. She gazed at the central projections with some concern.

Lucky and Clixie had draped themselves over the armrests of the small chair and offered up their backs for pets and hugs.

"How many people will get hurt, you think?" The eldest girl asked as she scratched Clixie's chin.

"Miaow miaow…"

"My uncles and aunties have talked much about the battles our clan has fought. I never knew they could be so scary. Is this what everyone used to feel?"

"Miaow miaow miaow."

"I will make sure our clan will never feel this way then." Aurelia quietly vowed.

Ves on the other hand continued to 'educate' his youngest son about mech design.

Though any other child shouldn't have been able to understand anything about mechs let alone figure out 2 + 2, Ves did not underestimate the intellect of his latest child.

In any case, even if Marvaine barely understood anything about mechs, it was fun to talk about them anyway.

Many children developed a fascination towards mechs and Ves wanted to make sure his son was not an exception.

"What does Mark II stand for, papa?" Marvaine asked as he continued to sit on Ves' armored lap. "Does it mean the mech is named after Mark?"

Ves chuckled. "No, my son. Mark can be a name, but it can also have a different meaning. When it comes to mechs and other technological products, Mark usually stands for the version of a particular model. Sometimes people use No., Version or Variant, but it all comes down to the same meaning. Whatever product has a higher mark is the newer version of the same machine."

"So this is not your Transcendent Punisher mech?"

"Yup. Our clan used to field an older version, but its firepower was too weak and its defenses weren't sturdy enough to keep up with the battles in the Red Ocean."

"What did you change, papa?"

"Many things." Ves replied as he called up a projection that showed the simplified design schematics of the first and second versions of the Transcendent Punishers. "Look at these two designs. What stands out to you first?"

"The outside looks the same but the inside looks different!"

"That's right! What an astute observation! The exterior looks the same because this is the look of a Transcendent Punisher. It is supposed to look big, heavy, imposing but also righteous and sacred. That is why it has a bright coating. It makes its pilots feel good. I already like how it looked in the original version, and didn't change anything about the exterior in the second version."

Marvaine paid more attention to the differences in the internal design of the two versions of the same model. The changes that the Larkinson Clan had made were drastic. It was not a mistake to say that Ves and his design team had practically reinvented the Transcendent Punisher model!

"The guns are all different." The boy pointed out. "Their shapes are different."

"That's right. I've replaced the old set of guns with completely different models that are better in many ways. Take the main source of energy damage output for example. The first version of the mech that I designed many years ago only came with a pair of relatively ordinary positron beam cannons. There's nothing wrong with them, but our clan can do much better these days. I've designed a brand-new luminar crystal cannon model that is based on my more recent advancements in luminar crystal technology."

Marvaine looked confused as he compared the two designs. "Huh? Why is this cannon stronger when it looks simpler?

Ves chuckled again. "Who told you that more complicated mechs are stronger?"

"Mama."

"Well, mama is wrong. My new luminar crystal cannons are based on alien technology, who just happens to be better at developing energy weapons than humans. By borrowing the technological principles of the luminar race, I've developed these powerful cannons that are currently pounding the defenses of the Fridaymen with great power! Look at this graph, for example. This shows the estimated damage output of different ranged mechs. Our Transcendent Punisher Mark II's are easily out-damaging the models of the Hex Army. Our allies have a lot more heavy artillery mechs than us, but the quality and production cost of our Ylvainan machines are much higher!"

Ves did not skimp on much when he led the upgrade project for the Transcendent Punisher line.

Ranged combat was the name of the game in the new frontier. A mech force had no capital to roam the Red Ocean and fight against aliens without bigger and more powerful guns!

"Do you know how much stronger my exclusive luminar crystal cannons have become compared to the old pair of positron cannons?"

"How much?"

"60 percent!"

Marvaine's eyes grew wide. "Ohhhh."

"Do you remember what I taught about percentages?"

"You divide something by a hundred and multiply by the number."

"That's correct! So what does it mean if a weapon is 60 percent stronger?"

"It takes much less time to kill an enemy!"

"That is also correct!" Ves grinned. "This is exactly why I invested so much money and effort into equipping the Transcendent Punisher Mark II with my latest model of luminar crystal cannons. Not only has its versatility increased enormously by granting it the option of firing multiple different beam types, but it is also far more efficient and far more powerful due to all of the new tech. By eliminating enemies faster, our opposition will have less mechs left to destroy our own stuff, allowing us to destroy their remaining mechs with greater ease. This will produce a snowball effect that will eventually result in massive victories."

"Are we winning now, papa?"

Ves' expression turned a bit awkward. "Not… exactly. The current battle is still in its early stages. While our new artillery mechs are undoubtedly the strongest, we haven't brought enough of them to make a bigger difference in this artillery duel."

If Task Force Fury replaced all of its Hexer-developed artillery mechs with Transcendent Punishers, then Ves undoubtedly believed that they would be able to achieve a bigger advantage at this stage of the battle!

Unfortunately, the Hex Army could not afford to invest so much money in the development and production of its artillery mechs. Though it pared back the amount of mech models it actively used, there were still hundreds of different mechs that each needed to be produced in different quantities in order to protect the Hex Federation.

Even though Ves looked down on the more economical artillery mech models employed by the Hexers, he could not ignore the sheer amount of firepower they wielded at the moment!

"What about these other guns, papa? Why don't they look so different?"

"Ah, those are gauss cannons. I told you once before how they worked. Do you still remember what I said?"

Marvaine briefly paused and recalled the words from his prodigious memory. "You wrap a lot of coils around a barrel and run electric current through it to generate a force that can push a metal slug really fast!"

"Exactly! That's my little genius! Good boy!"

"Hihihi!"

The 100,000 MTA credits that he had paid Witshaw & Seneca to develop Marvaine's genes were not in vain!

Ves didn't have the slightest clue what kind of weird alien or artificial genes they blended into Marvaine's DNA, but the results so far made him extremely satisfied.

It was a blessing to raise a born genius!

"Look closely at the coils in the diagrams." The dutiful father pointed out. "They look a little different, don't they?"

His son nodded. "The coils of the newer mech are thinner, smaller and shorter than the older gun. Doesn't it mean that it is weaker?"

"That is only the case when everything else is equal, Marvaine. If the materials and overall design of the gauss weapon system has remained constant, then making these coils smaller should have indeed lowered the weapon's performance. Now what did I do to make this smaller gauss cannon more powerful?"

"You… made it more expensive?"

"Yup! Don't underestimate these relatively fragile-looking coils. They're made of materials that are much tougher and can conduct electricity much more effectively without deforming or melting after a time. By applying this approach throughout the entire weapon system, I have made it a lot more powerful but also a lot more efficient. It fires smaller projectiles, but because they fly out of the barrel a lot faster than before, its damage output is 40 percent greater than before!"

To be honest, Ves could have maintained the original size of the gauss cannons of the Transcendent Punisher Mark II, but he felt it made the heavy artillery mech too unwieldy and less fault-tolerant.

Since the guns were already powerful enough after incorporating high-quality materials and more advanced design elements, Ves had focused on making it more practical and enduring in longer engagements.

As a result, even if the Transcendent Punisher fought for numerous hours at a time, it would still be able to fire gauss rounds on a continuous basis as long as it was supplied with enough energy cells and ammunition racks, both of which could easily be replenished inside bunkers!